Communist infiltration of Hollywood motion-picture industry : hearing before the Committee on Un-American activities, House of Representatives, Eighty-second Congress, first session (1951)

432 COMMUNISM IN MOTION-PICTURE INDUSTRY today. One of our staff members heard it, and a few moments ago we were able to locate it in the newspaper. I am going to read it to you: [Washington Daily News, April 25, 1951, p. 7.] Soviet Opera Fails at Collective Farming The Russian Government has fired the director of its state-owned Bolshoi Theater for staging an opera which failed to show the best qualities of Soviet farmers. A brief radio Moscow announcement yesterday said A. V. Solodov- nikov had been replaced as theater director by A. I. Anisimov for unsatisfactory direction. But Pravda provided some details a week ago. It said Herman Zhukovsky's opera, From All Our Hearts, failed to reflect the riches and joy- fulness of life on a collective farm. Authors, composers, and stage designers were jolted by the Pravda blast, because the opera had received a Stalin prize only last month. Furthermore, Stalin had attended the opera shortly after. Pravda even assailed the All-Union Committee of Fine Arts, final authority on new artistic works, for permitting the production of an unhealthy, inartistic opera. That was based upon the failure of this play to properly describe the best qualities of collective farming. Now, is that the type of dis- cipline to which you refer in a general way as being objectionable and as being accepted in the Communist Party ? Mr. Dmytryk. It certainly is, and I think without question if the Communist Party ever got even control of the motion-picture medium the same kind of censorship would have taken place. As a matter of fact, I have discussed this kind of problem with Communists before. For instance, the famous case of the Communist musicians who were reprimanded by the party—and I remember asking, "How can any- body, any commissar or committee say what is people's music? It doesn't make sense to me, because a note doesn't propagandize as far as I am concerned." But they said, "No. If you really study it very carefully there is a great deal to this. There is a certain kind of music people understand. If they understand it, it is people's music, and it should be done. On the other hand, if the music isn't understood by the people, then it is counterrevolutionary and as such should be for- bidden." I have had these arguments specifically with Communists in Hollywood. Mr. Tavenner. And was that argument equally valid with regard to the Duclos letter, which has been mentioned here in the testimony a number of times ? Mr. Dmytryk. The Duclos letter was a little bit different. I'd say this was what happened. Browder recently, and his associates, decided they could cooperate with the capitalistic government, that revolution or war was not necessary, that the capitalist form itself would event- ually evolve into a Socialist form of government. Now, after the war was over and there was no longer need on the part of Russia to co- operate with the United States, Duclos, who was a French Communist, a powerful worker in the French underground, went to Russia. When he came back to Paris he wrote his famous letter, and I think it was a letter to a newspaper, in which he criticized severely the American party line as it had been followed under the Communist Political Asso- ciation. Now, this is a technique that is often employed. In other words, the Russians, in order to avoid any charge that they are directing outside Communist parties, will let an Italian Communist make—this is sup- posed to be purely a criticism. The fact that it isn't I think is clearly